1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a POS (point of sale) system using tablet terminals, and to a control method of the POS system.
2. Related Art
There is a great need to use tablet terminals (devices) as POS terminals to take advantage of the portability and operability of tablet devices. Related technology is described in JP-A-2013-186488, for example. JP-A-2013-186488 discloses a POS system that uses tablet terminals functioning as POS terminals, input devices for reading product barcodes and customer member cards, and printers connected to the tablet terminals and input devices. The tablet terminals run a POS application through a web browser.
To add an electronic payment function (such as a credit card payment function or e-money card payment function) to the POS system disclosed in JP-A-2013-186488, an application programming interface (API) for controlling a credit authorization terminal (CAT) and a reader/writer must be incorporated into the POS application. More specifically, the backbone POS application must be significantly modified simply to add an electronic payment function, and the cost of adding such a feature balloons.
Furthermore, when a tablet terminal is used as the POS terminal, directly connecting devices such as a CAT and reader/writer to the tablet terminal may not be possible because of interface issues. Connecting such devices through a USB interface, for example, also requires a wired connection, thus negating the benefit of the tablet's portability.